Current Running World Records
This plot shows men’s world records for running at each distance. It’s hard to read much here since the marathon and 100 km are such long distances all other records sort of lose meaning on a graph. ~40,000 meters is a lot compared to 100 meters, but astonishingly the pace difference is not that disparate, falling by less than half at ~55.4% of the pace.
Separated by Track, Middle Distance, and Long Distance
The track world records are what I consider to be sprints, which are the 100 through 800 meters. I also add the 300 meters and 60 meters in this part since it is a somewhat significant event, and useful for analyzing pace decline rate. The arbitrary distance of one lap of a track being 400 meters likely does have an impact on which world records are best since all training is conducted on that basis, and hardly anyone targets training for 3/4ths of a lap. I consider these to be sprints because their pace is consistently above 20 miles per hour other than the 800 meters which can’t really be considered middle distance. By pace Usain Bolt’s 200 meters seems pretty crazy given how little it fell off compared to his 100 meter world record, but that seems like the nature of short distance sprinting, the start is what really matters in the 100 meters, look at the current world champion Christian Coleman for more evidence of that. The 60 meters world record pace is actually slower than the 300 meter world record! It seems that it is really hard for humans to get moving. A plot/animation of the speed of sprinters over the course of the race would be very interesting to see.
Next we have the “middle distance records”, which are some of the longest standing records in athletics, other than the 5000 meters which was just broken after 17 years by Joshua Cheptegei, the other records have stood in excess of 20 years, in spite of technological improvements in one of the most straightforward venues of athleticism. These records paces are also plotted in kilometers per hour (kmph).
Finally we have the long distance world records by time and pace, two things stand out right away, GEBRSELASSIE Gebrselassie and Moses’ world records are set to go, and pace decreases very slowly at this point. Humans are remarkably capable of maintaining a pace over long distances, once again acceleration over time would be great to see, for long distance runners I imagine it would be flat at 0 up until the final few kilometers.
Plotting Men’s and Women’s Current World Records Together
Men’s and Women’s Records with Pace
Percent Difference At Each Distance
By this metric it appears that the most impressive world records are the men’s 20,000 through 30,000 meters. This could also just be the result of these races being largely unimportant in the racing world, as evidenced by the jump in the ratio of the half marathon.
Progression of the 100 meter world record
The vast majority of world records have been broken at positive wind speeds, is this because the races are run in non-windy conditions, or wind speed has a drastic effect on runners? Given how minor the negative wind speeds are when it is broken, it is likely that this is because it is having a significant impact.
Percent Improvement for World Record Each Time
Usain Bolt is absolutely bonkers good, no one else has ever made such an individual dent into the 100 meter world record.
Animation of 100 Meter Records Over Time
